Contents

Character design

Claire Redfield was originally known as Elza Walker, the female lead in the original version of Resident Evil 2. This version of the game, which was between 70% and 80% complete, was scrapped by the development team after a year of work, and is now widely referred to as Resident Evil 1.5. In the released version of the game, the blonde biker Elza was changed into Claire Redfield,[2] having been given physical features which more closely resemble Chris Redfield.[3] Claire was added as his younger sister in order to connect Resident Evil 2 to the original game.

Appearances

In video games

Claire first appears in Resident Evil 2, which revolves around her search for her missing brother Chris, an officer in the local police special force. She arrives in Raccoon City to find the town being overrun by zombies. Claire soon meets up with a rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy, but along the way she is separated from him. The rest of the game focuses on Claire's attempt to escape from the city alive. She maintains radio contact with Leon and teams up with a young girl named Sherry, while fighting against the various creatures infesting the Raccoon Police Department, including a mutated William Birkin. Claire eventually escapes from the city through the Umbrella Corporation's underground research complex along with Leon and Sherry, after the three of them manage to destroy Birkin. As revealed in the epilogue of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Claire left to continue her search for Chris, while Leon and Sherry were rescued by the U.S. military.

Code: Veronica is set three months after the events of Resident Evil 2. Claire, still searching for her brother, is the player character for the bulk of the game. After an unsuccessful infiltration of Umbrella's medical branch in Paris, Claire finds herself imprisoned on Umbrella-owned Rockfort Island.[5] She escapes and teams up with fellow prisoner Steve Burnside following another viral outbreak caused by a rival corporation of Umbrella's. During the escape, she manages to discover the whereabouts of her brother and sends a message to Leon, telling him to get help from Chris. The pair escape from the island, only to find themselves in another of Umbrella's secret labs, this time in Antarctica, before they are taken captive by Alexia Ashford. The second half of the game follows Chris trying to save his captured sister from Umbrella. He finds his way into the Antarctic lab and rescues Claire before the final battle with Alexia. The siblings escape from the facility via the jet Chris used to get there. During the game's ending they vow to put an end to the Umbrella Corporation.

Claire also appeared in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, which retells the events of both games.

On film

Claire plays a major role in Resident Evil: Degeneration alongside Leon S. Kennedy. The film is set seven years after the events of Resident Evil 2.[6]

In Resident Evil: Extinction, Claire is the leader of a convoy of survivors who, at the end of the film, go to Alaska in search of a safe haven.

In Resident Evil: Afterlife, Claire, is ambushed by the Umbrella Corporation and manipulated by a device that controls her and impairs her memory. She is rescued by Alice and reunited with her brother Chris, played by actor Wentworth Miller. Together the three rescue over 2,000 survivors from the Umbrella trap-ship Arcadia. The three manage to defeat and kill Albert Wesker with the help of Convoy survivor K-Mart, who had been a close friend of Alice and Claire's, and find themselves preparing to fend off an attack by Umbrella led by a device-controlled Jill Valentine.

Portrayal

In the live-action films, Claire is portrayed by Ali Larter (dubbed by Hiroe Oka in the Japanese version). In the Resident Evil 2 commercial she was played by Adrienne Frantz.

Reception

Claire has been featured in lists such as GameDaily's "Top 50 Hottest Game Babes on Trial" in 2008, ranked #42,[8] and UGO Networks' "Top 50 Videogame Hotties" the same year, where she placed #47 with the comment: "Any woman that can take down a horde of zombies is A+ by our standards. But if she can do all that while exposing her midriff, she gets a heaping pile of brownie points."[9] In the 2009 article "Top 9 greatest video game heroines", San Francisco Chronicle cited Claire as an example of a positive female game character "Brandi Chastain would be proud of," stating that despite being the "least flashy" of the series' female leads, she "gets the nod for saving her brother early in the series."[10] In 2009 a retrospective GamesRadar article "Ugly polygon "babes" of yesteryear" stated that gamers fondly remembered Claire's appearance in Resident Evil 2 due to the cutscenes: "Claire’s toughness and vague resemblance to Claire Danes made her an instantly beloved icon of horror gaming" and countered this with Claire's polygon-based appearance during gameplay.[11]